The Intellectual Rot and the Golden Opportunity

Daniel Henninger nails it in his critique (“University Presidents Flunk Out,” Wonder Land, Dec. 14) of the pusillanimous testimony of the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and M.I.T. The hearings prove the acuity of one of the few observations of Karl Marx that accorded with reality: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

The intellectual rot that is now at an advanced stage in higher education began in the 1980s, when radical academics of the “progressive left” took over from scholars, most of whom were political liberals. Mr. Henninger’s pointing to the earlier malign influence of Herbert Marcuse is spot on, as I pointed out in a 1998 book. Marcuse’s thesis that the lower classes should have more rights than those more fortunate has enabled universities to inflict an array of unequally applied practices that favored those they considered “oppressed.” It generated policies ranging from affirmative action in admissions to the enactment of speech codes to prevent discomfort—as if four years of liberal arts education should coddle rather than challenge and educate.